Food memories and writings to ride out this pandemic
Of course I miss traveling. Since I started writing about food, I had been going around the country for regional cooking and abroad for different countries’ cuisines.
My calendar shows that the last booked trip was Pampanga, Bacolod, then Davao all in the span of six days. That was before the pandemic. But it illustrates how my working life was like.
Staying put for me happened even before the pandemic. Those last scheduled trips could not be taken because of a syndrome that sent me to the hospital and then to therapy later to recover the use of my hands and feet. So it wasn’t a shock for me when we all had to stay put for a long while, that even in the early stages of our lockdown, a trip to the next barangay was not even possible.
Having to stay at home made my writing retrospective, made me take stock of my observations and conclusions. The first book I wrote, “Philippine Regional Cuisine: A Country’s Heritage” (Monterey Farms Corp., 1995), had titles for the regions covered that was a description of the cooking in a few words. Among those, there were a few that still resonate for me—“Pampanga: Every Dish is a Delicacy”; “Batangas: Straightforward, Simple Cuisine”; “Bulacan: Cooking Connected to the Past”; “Palawan: Preserving Nature and Native Cooking.”
That first book featured only some provinces in the western part of the country, as far north as Ilocos and as far south as Tawi-Tawi. It was supposed to be followed by two more books that would feature the eastern part and the middle part. But in the corporate world, the project
There is nothing like being at the place where the cooking happens
of one executive who was retiring wasn’t going to be the project of the executive who would take over.
Constant feature
However, that project started my career in food writing. And when tasked to edit Food Magazine, I made sure that regional cooking was a constant feature. Some of the titles used in the first book were also used in the magazine and then in my book, “Country Cooking: Philippine Regional Cuisines” (Anvil Publishing, 2014).
Unlike the first book, “Country Cooking” featured re gional, provincial, city or town level cooking. And it brought me all over except to places I hadn’t had the chance to visit, such as Cagayan and Isabela, for which visiting cooks for a food festival and a friend gave me the information, or places I was advised not to go, such as and Jolo.
But not going there didn’t mean I couldn’t know the cooking. In that first book, Jolo cooking was demonstrated by Lily Cid, a Christian who lived in Jolo for most of her life. The Satti was also introduced to me then, the local barbecue with a tomato-based sauce. And then my friend who married a German Tausug taught me how to cook pyanggan manuk, the wonderful chicken boiled in turmeric and coconut with a spice mix called pamapa itum, before being charcoal-broiled.
The next opportunity to learn about Muslim Mindanao cooking was for the book “Muslim Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago: A Current of Narratives” (ArtPost Asia, 2019). Jolo cooking was demonstrated in Davao by a cook from Jolo. Basilan and Cotabato cooking were done in Cotabato, where there was a Mindanao festival and several provinces were represented. We went to Marawi for a pagana, a Marawi banquet, at the Mindanao State University.
There are enough of my memories and writings to ride out this pandemic. Of course, there are also the books that I have collected about our cooking and those of other countries. And the internet and documentaries in streaming sites that will keep me busy.
Will I travel when this pandemic goes away? Of course. There is nothing like being at the place where the cooking happens, knowing firsthand the environment and imbibing the atmosphere. And, of course, meeting people face to face. INQ